Planetarische Bauern

Planetarische Bauern (Planetary Peasants) – Large special exhibition from May to September 2025 at the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale)

The year 2025 marks the 500th anniversary of the end of the German Peasants' War and of Thomas Müntzer's death. Against this backdrop, Werkleitz is inviting 15 international artists and collectives to develop new works during a residency in Saxony-Anhalt. These will be presented at the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg Halle (Saale) in a joint exhibition with the Kunstmuseum Moritzburg from May to September 2025.

Five hundred years ago, the 'common people' – farmers, craftsmen and miners – rose up in the German countryside against the feudal authorities in power at the time. These uprisings, which were bloodily suppressed in May 1525, have gone down in history as the Peasants' War and are regarded as the first revolution on German soil. Today, farmers in Germany are rising up against restrictive EU laws and subsidy cuts. The distance in time and content seems great. However, some of the central points of the struggles of that time are once again – or still – highly relevant, especially if the perspective is extended beyond Germany and the EU: appropriation of land at the expense of local populations, unfair distribution of costs and profits, the fight against the privatization of common goods, the call for social and climate justice. In addition, environmental changes caused by agriculture – such as nitrogen enrichment through over-fertilization, displacement of wild plants and animals, soil depletion, water shortages and CO2 emissions – have now gone from being regional to planetary factors.

Some of the most important sites and places of remembrance of the historic Peasants' War, which is closely associated with the name of the preacher and militant Luther antipodean Thomas Müntzer, are located in central Germany. Werkleitz takes this as an occasion for a contemporary, artistic investigation that deals with the preconditions and open questions of the historical occurrences as well as with the social, economic and material conditions of today's globalized agriculture and its planetary impacts.

For the development of new artistic productions, Werkleitz is in talks with Kateryna Aliinyk (UA/DE), Lara Almarcegui (ES/NL), Mabe Bethonico (BR/CH), Tega Brain (AU/US), Viktor Brim (DE), Chto Delat (RU/DE), Alice Creischer & Andreas Siekmann (DE), Gauri Gill (IN), Tamás Kaszás (HU), Luisa Keintzel (DE), Lutz & Guggisberg (CH), Ilona Németh (HU/SI), Åsa Sonjasdotter (SE/DE), Total Refusal (AT) and Michael Wang (US).